Interlude: An Appeal to the Exiles

⁶ Up, up! Flee from the land of the north, says the Lord, for I have spread you abroad like the four winds of heaven, says the Lord.^{(A) 7} Up! Escape to Zion, you who live with daughter Babylon.

¹¹ Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them.^(A)

¹³ Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?” The priests answered, “Yes, it becomes unclean.”^{(A) 14} Haggai then said, “So is it with this people and with this nation before me, says the Lord, and so with every work of their hands; what they offer there is unclean.^(B)

⁷ King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.^{(A) 8} King Cyrus of Persia had them released into the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.^{(B) 9} And this was the inventory: gold basins, thirty; silver basins, one thousand; knives,^[a] twenty-nine; ¹⁰ gold bowls, thirty; other silver bowls, four hundred ten; other vessels, one thousand; ¹¹ the total of the gold and silver vessels was five thousand four hundred. All these Sheshbazzar brought up when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

⁴ Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

Live as Servants of God

¹¹ Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.^[a](A)

¹⁴ Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. ¹⁵ Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct,^{(A) 16} for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”^(B)